Perhaps Not
by WinterShowers
Summary: She was Maya Penelope Hart, and she was dying. It wasn't that she wanted to die; no, she wanted to live. But everyone was too busy living to notice her dying. Everyone except Lucas, that was.


**Hello! I'm terrible at finishing fanfics but I finally made something on this new account that I might like actually stick with (ideally) so yeah. This definitely has a trigger warning for depression (don't read it if you think it will upset you) but as it goes it will have good themes in that direction (if I myself can write them tbh). I hope you like the story and I will ideally update as soon as I can depending on my homework situation (which I have no effort to do so I'm writing instead..that's the way it goes haha). Anyway, read on!**

* * *

I was alone. I was all alone. My mom was married finally, I had a "someday" finally, but I was alone.

I was surrounded by my friends, _five_ of them, but I was alone. I was so very alone.

I was always alone now. It wasn't because I truly was alone, though I was; Riley had Lucas, Lucas had Riley, Farkle had Smackle, Smackle had Farkle. Zay had me, I supposed. But it wasn't the same, and I knew I didn't ever want it to be, either. I didn't want it to be that way with anyone, maybe. Because I didn't want it to be that way with Lucas. Only Riley did. And I was Riley, but now I wasn't, so I didn't want it to be any way except friendship with him. I was just Maya Penelope Hart, and I was alone.

"Do you want to sleep over tonight?" Riley asked me, tilting her head to face me. We were sitting at Topanga's how we always did. Everyone had been talking but me, I guessed. "My mom told me your mom and Shawn are going upstate overnight. So you shouldn't be alone."

"No, I'll be fine," I told her before I even considered whether or not I wanted to have a sleepover. It was strange because I could have said yes just as easily and spent the night watching Red Planet Diaries and eating a home-cooked meal, but I said no. The Maya of seventh and eighth grade would have almost always said yes, but the Maya of January of ninth grade said no without a thought.

"But we'll have fun," Riley whined, pouting at me. "You haven't slept over in a whole week. Why don't you want to?"

I felt everyone's eyes on me and it stressed me out a bit, so I tried to mentally shatter the invisible glass that was separating me from them (that glass was always stubbornly there now, like I wasn't apart of their lives and like I was hardly living a life and like they were all more valuable than I because I was a shell living behind imaginary glass) and perk up. "I do," I said as convincingly as possible. "I do, but I have to do that science project that's due tomorrow. I haven't started it." I did my best impression of careless, annoyed Maya.

It worked, and everybody rolled their eyes and laughed. "At least you're doing it," Zay joked. He looked into my eyes as he said it, but I looked away and found myself looking into Lucas's eyes. He didn't turn away but instead stared back as if he were looking into my soul, so I looked away again, this time at the wall.

"I could help you," Riley suggested, clearly caught up on the idea of a sleepover. "Although I wouldn't do it all for you."

That was an idea. At Riley's there would be enough going on that I could maybe climb outside of my glass chamber for the night (something that I never wanted to do until I was out and then life felt semi-normal again), _and_ she could do my homework for me. I had no energy to do it, so I likely wasn't going to actually do it back at home. If Riley did it, even part of it, my C- in the class might go up.

"Okay, good idea," I said mischievously. "You do my homework, and I'll watch TV."

"No," Riley argued, "you do your homework and if you don't understand something I'll help you. But otherwise, you do it all by yourself."

I didn't like the phrase "if you don't understand something." Just because I never payed attention and never did my homework, that didn't mean I was stupid. It bothered me because while people always assured me they knew I was smart even when I thought otherwise, at the end of the day they treated me as though I was not smart at all.

"If you won't even do it, then I'll do it by myself," I said, trying to get Riley to choose the fun of a sleepover over the knowledge that she was allowing her best friend to cheat.

Riley was about to do just that when Lucas interrupted her. "Don't do it for her, Riley," he said. "Maya, you should do it by yourself. At Riley's." He used the same tone he had used all those years ago when he held his coat over Riley's head and asked her why she hadn't stopped me from setting off the sprinklers. I remembered that day well. It was the day I knew Lucas was going to choose Riley over me no matter what I did. Later on I had wondered if I was wrong, but it did turn out I hadn't been. My initial predictions, while pessimistic, were rarely wrong.

"Come on, Maya, please," Riley whined even more forcefully than before. "Your mom doesn't want you staying overnight alone, I bet."

That was untrue. My mom didn't care at all. She was a great mother when she tried, but there were certain things–like me staying alone overnight, and me walking through creepy neighborhoods by myself–that it had never occurred to her to prevent. And even if it had, I was sure she wouldn't if it caused her to cancel time with Shawn. It was okay that he made her stop worrying about me, of course; I was happy she was happy and worry-free.

"She trusts me," I said, because that sounded better than "she doesn't mind at all." "I'm always okay."

I hadn't meant for it to come out the same as that mantra I used to say when I was younger, but it sounded exactly the same. Riley and the others appeared uncertain, and Lucas looked flat out unconvinced. "How often does your mom leave you alone?" he asked in what was not passing for the curious voice he was definitely shooting for.

"Not often," I lied automatically. Saying the truth would make this seem like something it wasn't; it would be disrespectful to let my mother come across as a halfway parent when she was trying so hard to be more. "Will you all stop bothering me?" I added, fake laughing. "I should go home now to start the project."

Riley was visibly disappointed, but I did my best to ignore her. Lucas stood up as I did, so I glanced back at him violently. _He_ ignored _me_.

"I'd better go, too," he started loudly. "My mom wants me home for dinner early tonight. She gets into cooking in the winter."

That was stupid, but everyone bought it. I rushed outside into the cold, pulling my coat around me as I did, hoping I could evade Lucas if I flew away fast enough.

I couldn't.

"So you're going home to work on your project?" Lucas called to me lightly as he shut the door to Topanga's. "And you're really, truly going to do it?"

I gave him a withering look. "Yes, I'm really, truly going to do it. It'll be great. Better than yours, I don't doubt."

"Sure."

"What difference does it make to you?" I snapped. The cold was getting to me, and as I clutched myself for warmth, I started to feel reality slip away from me. It happened too much now, but it was odd every time; it was like someone I knew so well would be standing in front of me, and suddenly I would feel shy around them and all I would be able to think about was how they were another person with feelings and I didn't know what those were and everything I said they heard. It made me shy and nervous to speak. And the less I said, the more isolated I felt–it was a vicious cycle.

Maybe Lucas noticed I was hunching up more or that my eyes were glazing over, or maybe he was just a nice person to everyone regardless of whether they were someone he cared about or his friend that was really just his girlfriend's friend who never said much to him anymore except to make fun of him, but he softened and said, "I just wanted to know because you haven't done any of the science homework since like November, so you must be lost. Not because you're dumb or anything, just because-"

"-I don't care," I finished for him. I didn't want him to soften; I'd rather he be nonchalant. He felt like a stranger right now, so it only made me uncomfortable that he was talking to me as if we were close and we talked about things like this. Sure, he probably wanted to think we were close, but _nobody_ was close to me. It was better that way. "I will be perfectly all right," I continued bluntly. "You will get an A, and I'll probably get a D, but that's just the way it always has been, you know. And you're the one with the A, so I can't imagine why you would worry about it." I tried to add a more playful laugh in at the end, but it sounded more like a strangled cough.

"Come on, Maya, you're being difficult. Why wouldn't you just do it at Riley's with her to go to for help? It's no different than you doing it alone at your own house, except you wouldn't be in a dark room by yourself."

"We have electricity," I said scornfully. The evil part of me wanted Lucas to look embarrassed or at the very least irritated at me, but he didn't. "You are the one being difficult, Huckleberry. And I'm literally freezing, so I'm going to go home before I die of frostbite."

I'd intended it as a joke, but Lucas suddenly looked worried. Anticipating he might start fighting with me about walking home in thirty-five degree weather, too, I spun around on the heel of my boot and began walking briskly away from him. I hoped to God he wouldn't come running after me, and luckily he didn't. He just called after me, "If you have any questions, text me!" I gave no acknowledgment that I heard him, but he probably knew I did. He also probably knew I would not text him no matter what questions I had.

It was good to get away from people. Well, it was simultaneously good and horrible. I felt safer all by myself, nobody looking into my eyes or wanting me to engage their conversation when I was so tired. But all by myself, there was nothing to distract me from how empty I felt inside. There was nothing to pull my thoughts away from where they inevitably went at the end of the day: _what difference does anything make?_ There was no doubt in my mind that I would show up to science class tomorrow with no project, and I would get an F, and my grade would drop to a D, and my teacher would call me up after class and tell me I needed to do my homework because this was high school now and things mattered. There was also no doubt in my mind that it made no difference to me that this would happen. It seemed I was incapable of caring about things anymore. If there were a way for me to crawl into my bed and for the night to just consume me entirely, ripping me from the world, I would never question that that was what I wanted.

Perhaps it was depression. Or perhaps this was just what happened when you were alone, so alone. Perhaps one day the sun would shine again, and on that day I would regret running away from everything that mattered. Or perhaps that day would never come, and it would never get better, and I would forget there was ever a time when I had had enough energy to do things like climb through a girl's window and love a boy and wish for my father to come back. Perhaps the universe had just made a mistake with me; perhaps it wanted to kill me, but it failed, so now I was trapped permanently, dead inside but with my heart still beating.


End file.
